Note II'-9 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: THROUGH OLD MEXICO, IN CHIHUAHUA, DURANGO, AND COAHUILA, TO THE PRESIDIO GRANDE, MARCH 22D-MAY 31ST, 1807.

B. Bucks Co., Pa., Jan. 24th, 1754, of Quaker parentage (his father was one of those who had land on the Patapsco, and founded Ellicott's Mills, now Ellicott City, near Baltimore, Md., 1774); became a distinguished astronomer, surveyor, and civil engineer, and died professor of mathematics at West Point, N. Y., Aug. 29th, 1820. He did an immense amount of surveying and boundary-running, mostly of important and official public character, in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and elsewhere; in 1790, was directed by Washington to lay out the city of that name; in 1792 became surveyor-general of the U. S.; and in 1796 was appointed by Washington U. S. Commissioner under the treaty of San Lorenzo el Real, to run the southern boundary between the U. S. and New Spain. This is the work to which Pike alludes, though he is a little out in his dates, as witness the following title: The Journal of Andrew Ellicott, late Commissioner on behalf of the United States during part of the year 1796, the years 1797, 1798, 1799, and part of the year 1800: for determining the boundary between the United States and the possessions of his Catholic Majesty in America, containing, ... etc., Philada., Budd and Bartram, 1803, 1 vol. 4to, pp. i-viii, 1-299, with 6 maps, and Appendix, pp. 1-151, 1 leaf errata, and 8 more maps. Ellicott wrote this book, excepting the Appendix, at Lancaster, Pa., June to Nov., 1802; and while he was there in 1803 he coached Captain Meriwether Lewis in the use of astronomical instruments: see L. and C., ed. 1893, p. xxii and p. xxiv. Going down the Ohio to the scene of his official functions, Dec. 17th, 1796, Ellicott says, p. 21: "I passed the mouth of the Tennesee, and in two hours afterwards arrived at Fort Massac, and was politely received by the commandant Captain Pike," etc. This was Zebulon Pike, father of Zebulon M.: see the Memoir , anteà. The fort stood on the N. (right) bank, about lat. 37° 14´; early F. history obscure and not all of it authentic; site supposed to have been first occupied ca. 1711: see Beck's Gaz., 1823, p. 114, and John Reynolds' Own Times, 2d. ed. p. 16, with description of the place as it was in 1855. In descending the Ohio in 1758 the F. officer Aubry halted on the N. bank, at the old site, called 36 m. above the mouth of the river, to build a new post, which was garrisoned with 100 men and called Fort Marsiac after the first commandant. Thus the name is not Massac, as usually said, and still less is it derived from the apocryphal massacre which various historians have exploited. This fort was the last establishment of the F. on the Ohio, being kept up till they evacuated the country under the Treaty of Paris, 1763; it was a U. S. post till after the war of 1812-14, and during our occupancy became known as the old Cherokee fort. Pike alludes in the present work to a certain Nolan, who is easy to identify, but not to find out much about. Ellicott met him at the mouth of the Ohio, in Jan., 1797: "Mr. Philip Nolan, so well known for his athletic exertions, and dexterity in taking wild horses, stopped at our camp on his way from New Madrid to fort Massac," says this author, p. 29, with a footnote stating that Nolan "was killed by the Spaniards in the spring of 1801," after taking a very active part in various disturbances in that quarter. Ellicott passed down the Miss. r., past the Chickasaw bluffs (L. and C., ed. 1893, p. xl. and p. lii), and at Natchez encountered a bigger bluff in the shape of an individual who described himself in his pronunciamentos as his Excellency Francis Lewis Hector, Baron de Carondelet, Knight of the Order of Malta, Major General of his Armies, Commandant General of Louisiana and West Florida, Inspector of the Troops, Militia, etc., etc., etc. (though what his triplicate etceteras were is not given to ordinary mortals to know). This climacteric functionary was supported by a lesser luminary who filled the rôle of Don Manuel Gayoso de Lemas, Brigadier of the Royal Armies, Governor of Natchez and its dependencies, with three-ply etceteras as before (though he was dead before Aug., 1799). These two formidable obstructions to navigation, as an engineer might say, were not overcome by our surveyor-general for nearly a year, during which period they kept him busy with Spanish diplomacy. As I read the correspondence it seems to have largely consisted in saying they hoped God would bless and keep him forever, when they really hoped the devil would fly away with him before breakfast; and he had to silence both the caterwauling choristers before he could proceed with his scientific work. This he was free to do on the Spanish evacuation of the forts at Natchez and Nogales (Walnut Hills) in Jan., 1798.